Xbit's Review of the HD 3870 X2

B

Blacklash

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 16, 2004
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"The new card won six out of the nineteen tests, at least at high resolutions...

On the other hand, it was either equal to or slower than the single-chip ATI Radeon HD 3870 in seven out of the nineteen tests..."

Just like I've been saying from my experience with the X2; inconsistent, unpredictable and not a new champ.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/ati-radeon-hd3870-x2_19.html#sect0

I like this advice and think it sound-

"If you have already got an interest in the Radeon HD 3870 X2, you may want to make sure it is compatible with the games you play that are not included into this review."

I'd add to that buy it from a place that allows you to return it.
 
I hope nobody is surprised?

Will be fun to revist this topic in 6 months and see how people think of the 3870X2 by then...:D
 
[H] and bit-tech had already proved that. XBit is only one more to join the group. Sure, it's not a bad a card, but it's heavily dependent on driver support and thus, anyone thinking of buying it, should guarantee that there's Crossfire support for the specific game(s) they want to play or they'll have a $450 card that performs as a $225 one.
 
Silus said:
[H] and bit-tech had already proved that. XBit is only one more to join the group. Sure, it's not a bad a card, but it's heavily dependent on driver support and thus, anyone thinking of buying it, should guarantee that there's Crossfire support for the specific game(s) they want to play or they'll have a $450 card that performs as a $225 one.
Click to expand...

And the 9800GXT2 will most likely have same problems.
I don't like SLI/Crossfire showed down my throat..single GPU FTW!!!
 
Atech said:
I hope nobody is surprised?

Will be fun to revist this topic in 6 months and see how people think of the 3870X2 by then...:D
Click to expand...

Theyre probably going to be thinking the same. It was the same thing with R600...it just need some driver enhancements and blah blah blah, 6 months had come and gone, and drivers hardly did anything.
 
Atech said:
And the 9800GXT2 will most likely have same problems.
I don't like SLI/Crossfire showed down my throat..single GPU FTW!!!
Click to expand...

It's GX2 and yes, it will have the same problems. It may be faster than the X2, but it will still be SLI, which means it will depend on driver support.

And I agree. I also prefer very powerful single GPUs.
 
rich168 said:
it all boils down to driver maturity.
Click to expand...

No, it depends on drivers AND architechture...

The X2900XT isn't more tempting now...than 6 months ago....and no driver will fix the flawed hardware AA.
 
Yes it always boils down to driver maturity :)
Altrough I have yet to find any problems with my 2900 pro which would be caused by driver.
 
Michaelius said:
Yes it always boils down to driver maturity :)
Altrough I have yet to find any problems with my 2900 pro which would be caused by driver.
Click to expand...

No it dosn't...it's still the combined drivers/hardware that dictates prefoamnce.
No magical driver can make defect hardware run super-duper.
But would you like to show me decent AA preformance on your 2900?

I mean..the drivers should be mature now...right?
 
Blacklash said:
"The new card won six out of the nineteen tests, at least at high resolutions...

On the other hand, it was either equal to or slower than the single-chip ATI Radeon HD 3870 in seven out of the nineteen tests..."

Just like I've been saying from my experience with the X2; inconsistent, unpredictable and not a new champ.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/ati-radeon-hd3870-x2_19.html#sect0

I like this advice and think it sound-

"If you have already got an interest in the Radeon HD 3870 X2, you may want to make sure it is compatible with the games you play that are not included into this review."

I'd add to that buy it from a place that allows you to return it.
Click to expand...
whats your problem with 3870x2 :D everytime i enter thread that says something about 3870x2 you are there with your negative words
 
which facts everyone says different thing about this card some love it some hate it besides ati prooved that they can improve performance of cf with 7.10 driver shoot em up i think was the name of that driver there was huge improvement may be it will happen with new cfx driver that will be released in march lets wait and see
 
eric66 said:
which facts everyone says different thing about this card some love it some hate it besides ati prooved that they can improve performance of cf with 7.10 driver shoot em up i think was the name of that driver there was huge improvement may be it will happen with new cfx driver that will be released in march lets wait and see
Click to expand...

Typical ATI optimism...just like R600. Lets just wait and see how these drivers do...oh alright they gave us 3% 2 months after it was released, well just have to wait and see how the next ones do. And so on and so forth....Up to 60% in the Crysis timedemo with only a 1 or 2 fps difference in game...nice...cant wait to watch that timedemo...

ATI needs new architecture, and they need it 6 months ago...
 
eric66 said:
whats your problem with 3870x2 :D everytime i enter thread that says something about 3870x2 you are there with your negative words
Click to expand...

There's no problem. Just that [H] caught a lot of heat, because its review of the X2, didn't show it in such a good light as most others. It was actually the reason why Kyle wrote the "Benchmarking the Benchmarks" article, a week or so ago, to prove that their testing methods are better.

With Bit-tech's review, which uses similar methods as [H], we again saw that the X2 wasn't that good after all. Xbit also has the same conclusion.

In short, all agree that the X2 is not a bad card. It just does not conquer the performance crown it was supposed to take. And it is also worth to note the extreme importance of letting people know, that the X2 is heavily dependent on driver support.
 
Silus said:
There's no problem. Just that [H] caught a lot of heat, because its review of the X2, didn't show it in such a good light as most others. It was actually the reason why Kyle wrote the "Benchmarking the Benchmarks" article, a week or so ago, to prove that their testing methods are better.

With Bit-tech's review, which uses similar methods as [H], we again saw that the X2 wasn't that good after all. Xbit also has the same conclusion.

In short, all agree that the X2 is not a bad card. It just does not conquer the performance crown it was supposed to take. And it is also worth to note the extreme importance of letting people know, that the X2 is heavily dependent on driver support.
Click to expand...
i agree with that like every other card may be even more x2 performance is determined by driver and in game multi gpu support because of that i think march will be final answer cause 9800gx2 will be out by then and i think ati prepares better driver just guessing if that won't happen then ati will really fail this two gpu thing which is there future plan
 
eric66 said:
i agree with that like every other card may be even more x2 performance is determined by driver and in game multi gpu support because of that i think march will be final answer cause 9800gx2 will be out by then and i think ati prepares better driver just guessing if that won't happen then ati will really fail this two gpu thing which is there future plan
Click to expand...

And that's why I don't really like any of these approaches: X2 or GX2. I mean, I appreciate the technology. When the 7950 GX2, I considered it to be a technological marvel. And the X2 does take it into the next level, in how the card was designed, which IMO, is awesome. However, both solutions still depend too much on driver support. Same thing will happen with the new GX2.

Unless this technology evolves to be less dependent on driver support and actually take full advantage of all cores, then I'll have to avoid these cards. To me, SLI/Crossfire was always a gimmick and even though support for it is much better, I still prefer to get a very powerful single card.
 
eric66 said:
whats your problem with 3870x2 :D everytime i enter thread that says something about 3870x2 you are there with your negative words
Click to expand...

I bought and tried one and I was very disappointed. X-bit and [H]ard basically mirror my experience.

My plan was to buy a 2560x monitor and use the X2 to push it. Since it has unpredictable inconsistent performance I scratched the idea and got rid of the card. X-bit illustrates perfectly what I am talking about; winning six benches of nineteen and performing like a single HD 3870 or worse in seven is hardly a worthy investment of around 450usd. Even in titles where it excels it often has poor min frames and odd behavior of erratically speeding up and slowing down seemingly without reason.

Ultimately my "problem" with the X2 is based in personal experience.

I have no idea why Crossfire causes a performance hit in some titles, stutter in others and flashing textures in a few. In some games it also causes a faint annoying flicker. It reminds me of a flicker an old CRT might do at a very low refresh. I consider things like; how smooth a title plays, IQ, and if there are graphic glitches.

With the card I tried; "Crysis" DX10 and 9 path, "The Witcher", "Tomb Raider: Legend", "Oblivion" with all expansions, "UT3", "Hellgate London", "Timeshift", "Jericho", "WiC", "GRAW 2", "SupCom", "DiRT" and "NWN 2".

I also have a problem with folks that have never tried this card recommending it to others, particularly when they are directing them to buy it from places that do not allow you to return the product.

I'll quote part of my original post;

I like this advice and think it sound-

"If you have already got an interest in the Radeon HD 3870 X2, you may want to make sure it is compatible with the games you play that are not included into this review."

I'd add to that buy it from a place that allows you to return it.
 
That review is not very accurate, I get over 80FPS in COD4 with 4xaa and 16xaf, crossfire is definitely working with it. Crossfire also works with Company of Heroes Opposing fronts. Not sure about the others as I don't own any of them.
 
Shame that most of the problems seem driver related to crossfire, at least 6 instances of it in that review, too lazy to go back and count =p. If AMD wants this card to really succeed then need to fix these driver problems with CF not activating properly on these games.
 
^^Precisely, how long do titles like "Gothic 3" and "TRL" need to be out before "optimized" drivers show to make them work with Crossfire?
 
bluehaze013 said:
That review is not very accurate, I get over 80FPS in COD4 with 4xaa and 16xaf, crossfire is definitely working with it. Crossfire also works with Company of Heroes Opposing fronts. Not sure about the others as I don't own any of them.
Click to expand...

That helps sum up the experience others may get as well I suppose.
Some can get it working but will it be ok on your own system?

The performance varies drastically between games and different peoples setups.
 
Nenu said:
That helps sum up the experience others may get as well I suppose.
Some can get it working but will it be ok on your own system?

The performance varies drastically between games and different peoples setups.
Click to expand...

I didn't do anything to get it working, just installed it and it works LOL Same as all my games. The only game I initially had a problem with was Crysis, eventually figured out that the 64bit.exe is buggy as hell and started running 32bit and FPS improved drastically with no more slowdowns. Not sure if that is an ATI problem or Crytek problem.

I use to run 7800GT in SLI for about two years and it was the most frustrating experience ever always having to tweak, doublecheck make sure SLI was working and even when it worked it never worked well. I had pretty much sworn I would never go with another dual gpu setup again but I ended up giving in in the end because I wanted to try something new and I am glad I did because the technology seems to have come a long way. Every game I own just works no tweaking or anything don't have to doublecheck SLi/Crossfire is enabled etc etc...It seems to me dual gpu solutions are the future and we can either embrace it or deny it and stick to our fast becoming archaic single gpu solutions.

I mostly play mainstream games currently playing Orange Box, Bioshock, COD4, Crysis, Witcher, COH/Opposing Fronts and some others I can't remember off the top of my head they all work great. I understand some older games will not work properly with dual gpu setups this is much the same experience I had with my 7800GT's SLi but it seems nowadays pretty much all developers are coding for dual gpu solutions so if it's new games you want to play then dual gpu would seem a safe route however if older games are your interest then you might want to stick to single gpu, most older games don't require dual gpu to run with all the eye candy anyway.

We'll see what happens in the next couple months with new releases theres no way to know for sure but things have definitely progressed a long ways from my early days with dual gpu. However if I do end up having problems with new releases, I will have no qualms about switching to something that works better (Lately I have been buying every new card at release anyways LOL) but so far I am extremely happy with the 3870x2.
 
I wonder why they test titles where framerates are compeltly unplayable even in lowest resultions with all AA and AF they can set.
 
I picked up one of these cards on Friday and put it in over the weekend. I play mainly COD4 these days and there's no way that the review is accurate on that one.

I had an 8800GTX and I'm getting roughly 15-20 more FPS with the 3870x2 (this is overall with the FPS reader turned on in-game) and playing multiplayer. (This is based on me looking at the reader and playing a lot... not very scientific, but it does give me an idea)

One thing is, you have to set the option "Multiple Graphics Cards" to "Yes"

One thing I will say, is that the dips are slightly lower than with the 8800 GTX, but still only as low as 55-60.

I play at 1920x1200 with no AA but full AF. Even with AA on at 2x or 4x, I still get good frames and it works nice for SP but I like the faster rate for MP...

One thing I find though, is that this thing heats up like crazy...
 
You may add to Xbit's list of games that perform like a single HD 3870 or worse with the X2-

SupCom, note the placing of the X1950Pro :p
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/2651/supcom16001200cx2.gif

Need For Speed: Pro Street
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/1853/nfsps1920aajh5.png

WiC with AA on the DX10 path
http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/1379/wic1920aalf2.png

In Jericho it does add 3FPS vs a single card and loses to a stock HD 2900XT and 8800GT
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/7744/jerichory4.jpg

My experiences went like this-

Crysis DX10 path, flashing textures in the distance, FPS that went up and down rapidly with no reason.

Crysis DX9 path, looked fine and had odd FPS crashes and behavior.

The Witcher, the temple and trade quarters stuttered very badly with onboard Crossfire enabled.

Tomb Raider: Legend, much worse performance than a single card with onboard Crossfire enabled using AA + next gen content.

Oblivion, fine in the regular areas and some mild stutter in the Shivering Isles area. I could notice an odd pulse or flicker at night.

UT3, fine, no complaints.

Hellgate London, performed slightly worse than a single card using DX10.

Timeshift, fine, no complaints.

Jericho, darn near the same performance as a single card and edge smoothing killed performance further.

WiC, on the DX10 path with AA much worse than a single card.

GRAW 2, worked fine and couldn't put up more FPS than a stock 8800GT.

SupCom, horrid performance, much less than a single card.

DiRT, performed fine and barely faster than a 8800GT.

NWN 2, horrid performance with onboard Crossfire enabled or disabled.

There are guys going around other forums saying this card works like it should in TRL with AA active and next gen content enabled which is a nothing more than a lie. Crossfire has never worked properly in that title under those conditions and that includes onboard Crossfire with the X2. You get well less than a single card's performance.

So if you want to try one, go for it, just get it from a place that will issue you a full refund if you're disappointed. It was too unpredictable for me to risk getting a 2560x monitor and expecting it to push it. I kept wondering when I'd discover the next game it "didn't like".
 
let me add a few more to your list:

cod4: runs excellent
stalker: no flashing in cf from 7.2 drivers
call of juarez: no flashing in cf from 7.2 drivers
gow: excellent but unable to force aa in xp like nvidia 169.28 drivers
fear (all): stuttering in single player mode while moving forward in zoomed view
 
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